China is building a laser that can produce 100 quadrillion watts – about 50,000 times the planet’s total power consumption — a light so intense that it would equal the amount of the energy our Earth receives from the Sun.

At the heart of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power, achieving an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW) reported Science.

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“Normally, a vacuum is thought of as completely empty, but in quantum electrodynamics, it is actually full of virtual particles that appear and vanish all the time,”

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But most alluring, Li says, would be showing that light could tear electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, from empty space—a phenomenon known as “breaking the vacuum.”

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“That would be very exciting,” he says. “It would mean you could generate something from nothing.”.

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“This will be completely new physics,” Sergeev says, adding that the gamma ray photons would be energetic enough to push atomic nuclei into excited states, ushering in a new branch of physics known as “nuclear photonics”—the use of intense light to control nuclear processes.

This has enormous implications for the development of new materials, spaceflight and nearly every industrial process. The applications are beyond present reckoning. And the potential for new fields of science and industry are staggering. It will be very important to watch for unintended side-effects.

China’s “Green New Deal”? China is close to launching its ‘artificial sun’ nuclear reactor, providing the nation with limitless, clean energy. Officials announced that the machine which will hold the ‘artificial sun’, called the HL-2M Tokamak, could be built this year using nuclear fusion in which hydrogen from sea water and readily available lithium is heated to more than 150 million°C. The current Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei has created temperatures which exceed 100 million degrees Celsius – which is as hot as the interior of the sun.

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China’s “Green New Deal”? China is close to launching its ‘artificial sun’ nuclear reactor, providing the nation with limitless, clean energy. Officials announced that the machine which will hold the ‘artificial sun’, called the HL-2M Tokamak, could be built this year using nuclear fusion in which hydrogen from sea water and readily available lithium is heated to more than 150 million°C. The current Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei has created temperatures which exceed 100 million degrees Celsius – which is as hot as the interior of the sun.

fusion

Takamak is making the commercial version ?

here is a look at some of the reactors around the world

7 hours ago, bludog said:

Quote

China is building a laser that can produce 100 quadrillion watts – about 50,000 times the planet’s total power consumption — a light so intense that it would equal the amount of the energy our Earth receives from the Sun.

At the heart of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power, achieving an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW) reported Science.

-snip-

“Normally, a vacuum is thought of as completely empty, but in quantum electrodynamics, it is actually full of virtual particles that appear and vanish all the time,”

-snip-

But most alluring, Li says, would be showing that light could tear electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, from empty space—a phenomenon known as “breaking the vacuum.”

-snip-

“That would be very exciting,” he says. “It would mean you could generate something from nothing.”.

-snip=

“This will be completely new physics,” Sergeev says, adding that the gamma ray photons would be energetic enough to push atomic nuclei into excited states, ushering in a new branch of physics known as “nuclear photonics”—the use of intense light to control nuclear processes.

lets hope not , sounds like they are just building a real big laser to impress on their population and melt the worlds face off

I can imagine a sci-fi novel in which experimenting with the quantum properties of the vacuum makes history start disappearing ... and then that tech becoming weaponized to destroy the national founding events of competitor countries.

Interesting video. China's HL-2M Tokamak has achieved a sustained temperature of 100 million degrees C, sustained for 60 seconds. They expect shortly, to be able to run it at that intensity for about 15 minutes. If they can achieve this goal on a reliably repeatable basis, the HL-2M will presumably produce far more energy than it takes to power it up. That means it would be the first fusion generator in the world, to be commercially viable.

Commercially viable fusion generation would make fossil fuels obsolete. And it would have the potential to replace all forms of wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal forms of energy production. And do it nearly pollution free and with the emission of zero greenhouse gases. In addition, unlike with fission generators, such plants cannot be weaponized and produce no toxic or radioactive waste byproducts.

The rewards for successful fusion energy production are enormous. That's why so much frenzied research is now in progress. Whoever produces reliable fusion energy first, owns a bonanza, the likes of which, has never been seen.

On 3/13/2019 at 7:40 PM, rrober49 said:

lets hope not ﻿, sounds like they are just building a real big laser to impress on their population and melt the worlds face off

Lasers powerful enough to be destructive have not, so far, made good weapons. The one China is building will be 100 quadrillion watts and require an entire electrical infrastructure to power it. Such a laser could not be deployed on ships, planes or land vehicles. And, unlike the curved trajectory of artillery projectiles, lasers fire flat. So, due the curvature of the Earth, they cannot hit far distant land or sea targets. As of yet, portable lasers have been too low powered for use as battlefield weapons. The more powerful they get, the less movable they become.

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wow! this makes me wonder, if this approach has a high degree of feasibility why is it not being done here? Surely the amount of investment required would need to come from the Chinese government. Am I answering my own question by saying that?